Tuesday, December 29, 2009

My band, i.e., the functioning one that practices every week and plays out once in a while.

John and I met in Maggot, a Lower East Side scummy punk band that I joined after seeing them play once. Unfortunately, main man Greg Maggot and I butted heads and I was out of the band a few months later. Shortly afterward, I started playing with a douchebag who called himself Atom, where I met Dan, but that's another story.

Basically, John called me out of the blue one day after the Maggot debacle, right when I was realizing things weren't working out with Atom, and he asked me if I wanted to play music with him. Of course I did - he's a great guy, really easy to work with and he played bass. So we started writing and practicing songs with a drum machine in his garage. John wanted to name the band "Hypocrite," and I liked "Jackhammer," so we became Jackhammer Hypocrite. We actually played a show with the drum machine to about five people in a sandlot.

The thing was, we really wanted a singer and a drummer. Eventually, we found the latter in Dan Brown, a guy from my neck of the woods, the North Fork of Long Island. None of the singers we "auditioned" worked out, so John and I took over vocal duties. This line-up played several great shows, most notably at The King's Club in Centereach and Saints'N'Sinners in Smithtown. We also changed our name to JAKKHAMR HYPOCRYT for some reason.

Eventually, Dan Brown, who's a helluva musician by the way, began flaking on band practice, leaving John and I to sit there pissed off and frustrated. Finally, we just never called him back for practice and we returned to square one. We put a classified ad in a local music mag and talked to a few people, but nothing worked out. In the meantime, I played with Optimus Prime. Then one day, John called and said, "I've got a dumb idea - why don't I switch to drums and get Dan from Optimus Prime to play bass?" So that's what we did, and it's stayed that way for better or worse ever since, although now we practice in Dan's basement and we're called ULTRABASTARD!

There's been a lot of fun and a lot of turmoil. We did a mini-tour of Florida with Libyan Hit Squad. We played Cleveland and met Nightmare Mode. We've had incredible, ass-kicking shows and really horrible, embarrassing ones. We've hated each other and loved each other. We all love it, though, and we always come back for more. In fact, we're recording again (finally).

These songs were recorded in late 2005, right after John switched to drums and Dan joined.

(Live at Joe's going away party October 2009)

About the songs:(note: songs that are linked can be downloaded as samples)

01. Turning Fat Into Muscle - This instrumental evolved out of a riff I pulled out of my ass one night when John was playing bass and Dan Brown was still drumming. It became our staple opener for quite a while.

02. Numb - John wrote this one, though I came up with the chords for the solo part. It's a heavy, solid song about frustration - a subject that appears often in our lyrics. This was one of the original seven songs John and I assembled with the drum machine.

03. Don't Need You - I wrote this trying to write the "Sonic Reducer" of break-up songs. I actually originally recorded it on my 4-track for the second FPOS album that never materialized (because I had a real band for a change). It remains a crowd favorite.

04. Alive - John write this, but his original lyrics were some "pretty girl, dream come true" drivel that had no place in our repertoire, so I wrote lyrics about the asshole my mom married. Another of the original seven songs.

05. Kiss Me - One of mine, written shortly before "Don't Need You." One of the original seven.

06. Citiots - Dan came up with the music for this killer song and we all worked together to arrange it into what it is here. I wrote the lyrics about summers on the North Fork with some inspiration from The Candy Snatchers.

07. Piss & Hatred - John wrote this about a rough patch in his marriage. Also one of the original seven.

08. Big Fat Dumb - I was on a Motorhead kick when I wrote this song about an asshole I had to work with. We don't play it anymore, mostly because Dan can't remember the bass line and I'm too lazy to re-teach him.

09. Myrtle (Something Good) - Dan wrote and sang this garage-y stomper. He titled it "Something Good," but John said it should be called "Myrtle." Still one of my favorites.

10. Blues Type Thing - One of the original seven I wrote that was inadvertently ripped from Iggy Pop's "Rock And Roll Party" from Party. And yes, that's a Robert Plant reference in the lyrics.

11. Fight Song - I wrote this song about my experience moving across the country after being annoyed by Rush on the radio at work. Funny how that worked out. John said he could see the crowd fighting to it, so the name stuck. I think I wanted to call it "Wanderlust," but that didn't last long. One of the original seven, and, just for the hell of it, I'm gonna post that original seven song, four-track demo up here at some point. Also, be sure to listen to the hidden track, which appears 30 seconds after "Fight Song" ends.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

I don't know about you, but I despise Christmas. It's one thing to be socially obligated to buy crap for people when I can barely afford to cover my rent, pay my bills and feed myself, but, to add insult to injury, I'm constantly assaulted by trite, vapid Christmas music everywhere I go. Makes me want to drive around the malls blasting Fear's "Fuck Christmas" over and over again at top volume. I'd like to dig up the corpse of Charles Dickens and kick his dead, rotten ass into dust.

So if you're like me and you feel like killing every asshole in a Santa hat, I've assembled a Christmas carol antidote - a collection of blasphemous black metal from the Middle East. This is some of the most punishing, brutal black metal on the planet, and the reality is, most of these bands are risking their lives by performing this music in their home countries. Talk about balls.

If Jello Biafra wants to bitch about a lack of personal freedom, he should go try to record a black metal album in Syria, where the style is out-right BANNED.

I have personally selected each track on this comp from bands I've covered in my series on MEBM for Bigtakeover.com. None of it was cleared, but most of these tracks are out-of-print, nearly impossible to find or were never given proper releases due to political or religious restrictions. If you really like a song on this comp, please try to purchase something from that band and help support true underground music.

On a cyberpunk kick in 2005, I decided to create music that was truly "cyberpunk." I figured a good way to do this would be to record a digital instrument through an analog recorder, so I overdubbed my digital Korg Prophecy on my cassette-based Fostex XR-7 multitracker. I kept William Gibson's first novel, Neuromancer, in mind as I assembled the tracks to create this bit of lo-fi electronica.

If you're familiar with Neuromancer, the song titles should speak for themselves, so a track-by-track analysis is unnecessary. However, if you're unfamiliar...hell, download this album and listen to it while you go to the bookstore to buy it. Or, in true cyberpunk fashion, shop online for an ebook.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

To make a long story short, I met Dan through a total toolbag who went by the name of Atom (when he called, he'd say, "Hey, it's A-T-O-M!") and we all played together in a short-lived band called A Funeral in the Fall. Dan and I eventually got sick of said toolbag and quit, but that's another story.

Anyway, Dan had this thrash band that he had just started called Optimus Prime, but they couldn't hold down a guitarist. I volunteered, saying I couldn't practice with them, as they got together Monday afternoons and I had to work, but I'd kinda learn the songs and improvise the rest. As a big Melt Banana fan, Dan liked the idea and I joined as noise guitarist.

One day in February 2005, we went into Dan Keely's studio in Southold and recorded this gem.

We played a total of 12 shows from May 2004 to July 2005, when Joe, the singer, quit and we gave up. It was fun while it lasted.

Dan wrote everything. I think Joe wrote the lyrics for "Who the Hell Knows?" though. Lou played drums like a cracked-out Animal.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

December is my birth month (I was born on the seventh) so all my posts this month will be from my own musical projects.

When I recorded this album, I had been NY for a year and a half and I was completely frustrated. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't connect with anyone musically - open-mindedness isn't exactly prevalent on the east end of Long Island. I really wanted a punk band, but I was surrounded by strict metalheads and people whose ideas about punk rock came from MTV.

So, in DIY fashion, I did it on my own. It's a really good document of what was going on in my head at the time (late 2002). I also pulled out some of my favorite songs from the original MPAE tape and finally gave them a proper recording, despite the ultra-crappy production.

Goes well with a 12-pack of cheap beer.

(Mr Phreek circa early 2001 - Photo by Ackronomicon)

About the songs:(note: songs that are linked can be downloaded as samples)

01. Something More - This song came from nights where I'd just aimlessly drive around the North Fork because I didn't have any friends and I didn't know what to do with myself.

02. Q&A Session - Musically, this was one of the first songs I ever wrote back when I was 16, but I never really did anything with it. I decided to resurrect it here and write lyrics that are kind of like a punk rock Samuel Beckett. It's too bad I mixed this so poorly, as I really spent time on the drums.

03. Climbing Up the Walls - I had kicked junk a little less than two years before this was recorded, but I still had really bad cravings, which only got worse with my frustration.

04. I Wanna Die - This Dwarves-inspired ditty can be interpreted as either a celebration of hedonistic nihilism or a sarcastic mockery of it. Personally, I go back and forth, depending on what mood I'm in. Lots of people tell me this is their favorite song on here.

05. Deaf Mute - Remember that part in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden Caulfield says he wants to move to some podunk town and work in a gas station and pretend to be a deaf mute so he wouldn't have to deal with people? I horrified my freshman high school literature teacher when I told her I thought it was a good idea.

06. Pissed Off/A Sellout Like You - The first part is very Black Flag-ish hardcore, but the second part really came from Crass. Again, the drums were mixed way too low.

07. Bithing Again - A song about how all my songs were complaining about something or other. Even in my darkest moments, I retained a sense of humor. I've always really liked this one.

08. I Really Hate You - One of the songs from Anokist Antiquity that got a proper recording here.

10. Sick of Porn - Ack had sent me this horrible porn tape, The World's Luckiest Man starring Jon Dough (who has since killed himself), and, without internet access or the slightest success in the female department, it was all I had to get off. It got old really quickly.